We have made the best of the good weather over the Easter Bank holiday and have been finishing off (or attempting to) the walls in the sunken garden.
We now have the large topping stones on the upper wall. This is a two man job as many of the stones are too heavy to be lifted by one person. Many thanks to Gordon for his help in getting this is place. And no flatten fingers or toes in the process!
We are going to use reclaimed flagstones to pave this area, but this is going to have to wait for a little while. We looked at new Ashlar flags (they would look too new) and Indian sandstone (really, what in Yorkshire!), but we are going to hang on until we have the money to put down reclaimed local stone. At £50-60 a square meter it isn’t cheap and with around 100sqm in the sunken garden, it all adds up.
And while we are on the subject of money, we decide to invest in our own cement mixer. We bought a second hand one on eBay for £150. If we sell it in 4-6 months time for £100, it will have cost us £50. In contrast to the £40/week it would have cost to hire. It was a bit of a no-brainer.
We now have the topping stones on the upper wall in the sunken garden. The smaller ones are just about manageable by one person, the larger ones require two to lift. The end stone is a monster and two of us struggled, but we got there in the end.
The upper wall complete with toppings. These topping stones are 30cms high x 20cms wide x 40cms deep. There are cut from old stones in one of the local quarries. Many of them are old steps, window heads or door cills.
You can see the topping stones on the upper wall in the background, we are still working on the remaining walls. Hopefully, these will be finished in the next couple of days.
We still need to get the end wall up to the same level before we can put the topping stones on. We decided to invest in a second-hand cement mixer.